Posted
by
Unknown Lamer
on Friday July 26, 2013 @08:25AM
from the east-asia-has-always-been-our-ally dept.

AmiMoJo writes "The BBC reports that Huawei, one of the world's largest manufacturers of telecoms equipment, is controlling popular ISP TalkTalk's web censorship system. The system, known as Homesafe, was praised by Prime Minister David Cameron. Customers who do not want filtering still have their traffic routed through the system, but matches to Huawei's database are dismissed rather than acted upon. In other words there is no opt-out. Mr Cameron has demanded similar measures be adopted by all internet service providers (ISPs) in the UK, to 'protect our children and their innocence.'"

I have a problem with this. The wall over here (Hadrian's Wall) is a pathetic and useless thing, more like a fence and while it fits with the effectiveness of this system its still rubbish so I propose we call it the Great Firewall of Cameron.

Yeah, would be dumb to hire an american company. They will let most of the porn pass (at least, the ones that pay them) while keeping copies of your interesting "private" photos/posts/messages for later usage.

These aren't routers as such. They are transparent HTTP proxies. All the router needs to do is check each packet against a list of suspect IPs, and pass the matching ones down a different interface to the box that does the real work.

They are transparent HTTP proxies. All the router needs to do is check each packet against a list of suspect IPs, and pass the matching ones down a different interface to the box that does the real work.

Thing is that HTTP dosn't need to be over TCP/80, nor does TCP/80 need to be HTTP.Where things are more of a concern is that "transparent proxying" of HTTPS requires a Man In The Middle attack. Regular proxying, even using a "filtering proxy" does not.

Can't MITM HTTPS without adding a certificate to the client's trust list. Presumably, if a site is found to be hosting child porn on HTTPS the ISP will simply blacklist the IP entirely, even if that might mean disrupting some legitimate sites that share the server.

Even worse. A company with which you have never, ever dealt now has a right to your entire browsing history and "public metadata", courtesy of your friendly ISP.

All non-technical issues aside (the existence of some sort of filter is a matter for another discussion), the fact that all data gets sent through "Huawei's databse" should set off a few alarms, even ignoring the fact that it's Huawei (which is too close to the chinese government/chinese armed forces for comfort).

Even worse, the politicians in the UK are giving decisions of UK political sovereignty to a foreign entity.

Allowing a foreign firm to have intel on domestic interests and people is called one thing: Espionage.

Whomever allowed Huawei [1] to run this needs to be charged.

[1]: Huawei by themselves are not doing anything wrong. If MI5 got hired to do firewalling for another country, it isn't their fault. However, it is a sworn duty of a politician to protect domestic interests. Same reason why Buckingham Palace hasn't been deeded or rented to another country.

The fault is certainly not with Huawei, however unlike MI5 it is for hire... They are a company closely affiliated with the chinese government and suspected as a tool to push it's agenda. You can't hire MI5 nor would any other country want to. Huawei is effectively a company that is controlled by an "MI5" That you could hire ignorantly... which is the case here.

Also factually speaking, it is known that Huawei networking hardware has come preloaded with backdoors in the past. That alone should be enough to d

If Huawei staff are acting for MSS as people suspect will happen its either espionage or treason if you are a UK national - you can imaginge the scene in the future some where in the bowels of Thames house

Sir Harry Pierce "so would you care to explain why you have the browsing habits of all the residents of chetenham on those hard disks we found hidden in your luggage before you tried to board a flight to hong kong".

Too late, they already gave it up to US. Giving it up to someone else could balance the things, a bully could defend you against another bully if both are interested in what you have, but having only one ensures that you will get abused.

So Huawei has the power to effectively remove any content they dislike from the British peoples' internet and all the British government can do about it is file a bug report to a their helpdesk?What could possibly go right?

I can't understand why ISPs are supportive of this. Maybe they think they have to be or will face massive negative publicity from hate-mongering newspapers. Inevitably they will fail to make the filters watertight and circumvention methods will become common knowledge, resulting in bad publicity anyway. The government will threaten to crack down* on them, customers will sue for failure to babysit their children for them etc.

* unless cracking down is banned after it becomes a filter-dodging euphemism for face sitting.

Big ISPs are just trying to avoid becoming the target of government ire, because they're worried about their stock prices. Some small ISPs will go along on a similar basis, but they're worried not about stock but about being legislated out of existence.

Nonsense. Children are not innocent. Children are nasty, often cruel, little monsters in need of constant correction. "Innocent", in its original ( Latin ) sense, means "not (ob)noxious". Children are anything except "not (ob)noxious".

Censorship works for that too. Imagine the most hated nasty/cruel/monstrous enemy: wouldn't you want to restrict his internet?

Actually, no. Well, maybe. As a form of punishment by deprivation. And possibly to keep him from getting info on various ways to attack me. LIke you need the Internet for that. Where there's a Will...

It isn't strictly true that the better-informed you are the more civilized you are, but at least if you have the information and are ignoring it, you're just being a jackass. Whereas if you're walled off from it, your ignorance is understandable.

And possibly to keep him from getting info on various ways to attack me. LIke you need the Internet for that.

I'd argue that the internet actually makes it harder for terrorists to successfully attack us. The only ones who were successful didn't use the internet, they hooked up with terrorist organizations. The majority who failed pathetically got all their "know how" and ideas from the internet, aimed way beyond their meagre abilities and suffered from a severe lack of practical training and advice.

If the internet were not available those people may well have sought out links with organizations that would have hel

I work with children. In my extensive experience, they are vile creatures indeed. Ill-mannered, inconsiderate, uneducated and ignorant. They lack the most basic common sense, and what they do have is overridden by their susceptibility to peer pressure and the forces of advertising. They have a compulsion to destroy all that they touch, leaving me to spend my working day endlessly repairing equipment which has been vandalized - past highlights include throwing a switch from a window, placing a power cable in a stapler and impaling a laptop keyboard on a pen. Through an informal concensus they work to perpetuate this youth culture by relentlessly bullying any child who shows signs of being different, until they cease these attempts and rejoin the mob. They are in no way innocent - and, while many are ignorant of more worthwhile fields, peer discussion ensures they mostly have an encyclopedic knowledge of sexual acts and insults, albeit one riddled with misconceptions and errors.

Yeah, but none of that it the parent's fault or human nature, it's all due to video nasties and internet porn and advertising and paedophiles. You know, stuff the government can do something about rather than telling voter's it's their own fault or the nature of childhood.

To be fair it's not just the government line, the newspapers and other media won't tell parents to be responsible either.

I work with children. In my extensive experience, they are vile creatures indeed. Ill-mannered, inconsiderate, uneducated and ignorant. They lack the most basic common sense, and what they do have is overridden by their susceptibility to peer pressure and the forces of advertising. They have a compulsion to destroy all that they touch, leaving me to spend my working day endlessly repairing equipment which has been vandalized - past highlights include throwing a switch from a window, placing a power cable in

It's not just IT. Site Services are constantly addressing the same problems - blinds torn apart, chair legs or wheels broken, that sort of thing. Most often the doors - we have traffic control doors that lock (electromagnets) on a timer, part of an elaborate dance that ensures there is no deadly crush of students during lesson change. Students hate this though, and routinely throw themselves at the doors trying to force them open, or smash the locking device, or tear the draft-block strips from the doors so

You, Sir, have much of my respect, "lowest position" or not. For doing this, for holding this position. It must be like living in hell with three ice cubes dealt out to you on a daily basis. Someone has to do it, and you do it. Respect.

Young kids do not yet have the brain to emphasise, in fact they are clinically sociopaths. Most kids stay sociopaths well into puberty.Neither have young kids any kind of moral sense, morals are thought initially by parents, until when they are adult they set their own moral values.

Have you ever seen what kids do to each other in schools, I think hollywood has made quite a few movies about this fact.

I am no fan of Camerons prudy filter. I would rather he just fuck off to be frank.

But this article title is sensationalist crap.

What we have here is entirely the correct solution.

Some people want filtering for their connection, others don't. So, the free markey actually works here because one of the ISPs decides it can offer it as an opt-in option for the customers who want it. This is how the system is supposed to work. And for this ISP, they use Huawei.

They key is to have everyone asking the ISPs for the filter to be off, ideally at the same time. And then to put up signs on their front door warning anyone passing by: "Porn-enabled wifi network in operation".

'Yeah good morning, I'd like the porn filter on my broadband turned off, please?'
'What, are you some kind of PERVERT?'

And a year or three in the future...
"May it please the court, the state would like to introduce into evidence that the suspect did, in blatant disregard of the welfare of children everywhere, demand that his Internet service provider to remove all child-abuse protection filters from his account."

I am no fan of Camerons prudy filter. I would rather he just fuck off to be frank.

But this article title is sensationalist crap.

What we have here is entirely the correct solution.

Some people want filtering for their connection, others don't. So, the free markey actually works here because one of the ISPs decides it can offer it as an opt-in option for the customers who want it. This is how the system is supposed to work. And for this ISP, they use Huawei.

Big woop. The system works as it is supposed to.

Oh and Cameron can still fuck off.

haven't you been following the news, it's the system that is on staging to be opt-out. not opt-in.

The filtering allegedly works by checking every URL that you visit for porn (I've no idea how); if porn is found, not only are you blocked from seeing the URL, but it is also added to a blacklist.

The point of the article is that this checking is being done for everyone, even if they don't want filtering. So the ISP is, in effect, compiling a list of the URLs visited by their customers who do not want to be filtered.

And that list is being compiled on hardware that is alleged to be under the control of a foreign, potentially hostile, government.

You missed the point. Cameron wants all ISPs to have this filtering, and will make it mandatory if they don't. The filtering will be outsourced to the lowest bidder, which in this case was Huawei. Chances are it will always be Huawei or some other foreign company.

The operators of the filter have full access to everything every subscriber does online. Everything has to pass through their filter, even if you ask for it to be turned off. All of your traffic is routed through equipment owned and run by Huawei, a company known to have strong ties with the Chinese government. Huawei set the content of the filters too, which is of course secret. You don't think they are going to publish a list of URLs for you to scrutinize do you?

Government mandated filtering outsourced to foreign low bidder companies that have access to all your traffic even if you turn the filter off. And by the way, you can't turn the filter off completely anyway.

So what happens when the MSS starts using the data to blackmail people working for government or list X firms or the tabloids bribe ISP staff to tell them if a celeb/ member of the royal family has any interesting sites that he/she attempted to visit
The data from this is very sensitive so will ISP's start having to implement strict security controls and auditing run an internal security team and have staff with access to the data on people internet history positively vetted - none of these are cheap and

"Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, at a press conference to release the report, said companies that had used Huawei equipment had reported "numerous allegations" of unexpected behavior, including routers supposedly sending large data packs to China late at night."

TalkTalk's Homesafe service is pretty good at blocking the pr0n, firearms, alcohol, tobacco, etc. sites. You can change what sub-categories of sites to allow through (I allowed Alcohol as I have business interests in a brewery).
HomeSafe is also optional - you have to opt-IN to it.
So, the headline here is what, exactly? A product that claims to filter the Web for you actually does what it's supposed to do? It's my home network, I can choose what I want to allow onto it, surely?
The fact that it's Chinese also smacks of racism - I mean, the NSA and my own poxy government have already read my emails and tracked my phone calls. They're not Chinese.
Everything in my life that uses electricity now is made in China.

No the system is not opt-in, the filtering is opt-in, there's a difference.

The system is ALWAYS monitoring what sites you visit whether you opt-in or opt-out, it just depends on whether you want to be blocked from blacklisted sites as to whether it replaces the response to those web requests.

This means that even if I opt-out it's still monitoring every site I visit.

Cameron is just trying to motivate the young to learn technology. Tell a 12 year old boy his reward is porn and he'll learn how to bypass those filters in no time flat.

I've always thought about doing something similar with my own kid. Steadily increase the completeness of the filters until he has taught himself how to get around all of them. As of now, he's more interested in Elmo.

I recall a judge a while back who said something like: we should not protect the children by taking away rights they should have once they become adults.

Obviously the real problem is with prudes who hope that no one will ever be able to look at porn or enjoy sex again, but I do really wish more people would think of the other side and realize that stripping rights away that our children would otherwise grow into is just not worth it.

Obviously the real problem is with prudes who hope that no one will ever be able to look at porn or enjoy sex again, but I do really wish more people would think of the other side and realize that stripping rights away that our children would otherwise grow into is just not worth it.

You're assuming that's an unintended side-effect, rather than a goal.

The world's governments want to censor the Internet. They don't want anyone talking behind their back in secret. Pr0n is just a convenient excuse to get the censor filter in place so they can expand them in the future.

Oh, sorry, I forgot: this is Slashdot, so in about five minutes there'll be a mob along to inform us that the slippery slope is a logical fallacy, so this could never happen.

I completely understand that the goal is thought control. However, the people genuinely pursuing that goal are getting inadvertent help from a cadre of slightly more innocent folks who believe they are merely "thinking of the children." It is those folks who give the cause enough numbers to actually accomplish anything, and it is those folks I wish would wake up and understand the real outcome. Many of those people would not agree to take rights away from adults if it were

David Cameron: protecting your children and their innocence* since 2013. Yes, Virginia, there really is a David Cameron. And he's one creepy, mofo. He knows when you're sleeping. He knows when you're awake. He know when you've been bad or good, so be good for goodness sake.

*May not be protecting your children. Innocence may be robbed by realization